What is Auto Scalling Group in AWS? (34 of 285 technotes in 2015)

Auto scaling in AWS is a way to increase/decrease  the infrastructure required to run a server in AWS purely based on the demand.

• Its helps to scale up/down the EC2 capacity based on the conditions defined.
  
• Automatically increases the number of EC2 instances to handle demand.
• Decreases/stops  the number of EC2 instances when demand reduces to reduce cost.
• Note: all server / nodes should be in auto start mode for Auto scaling to work properly.

For example:

In a typical Websphere Clustered environment with multiple nodes and a Load balancer, we can create a Auto Scaling Group to start /stop nodes based on demand.

References: http://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/details/

Multi Tenancy vs Dedicated Tenancy Hardware in AWS? (33 of 285tech-notes for 2015)

Does your Business need a shared or private Cloud?

Shared/Multi Tenant
Pro: Price
Cons: security

Advantages:

• The largest advantage here is price - popular among small business and individuals
• maximum efficiency of computing resources. 
• vendor can make overnight improvements, like adding features. 
• Think Gmail and other services which Individuals user
• Think Rally, Salesforce which businesses use.

Disadvantages:

• who are not bound by compliance standards 
• less concerned about security. 
• risk of another business accidentally or intentionally snooping on data that is not their own. 

• Often this security risk is what keeps people away from the cloud altogether, but there is a way around it…

Dedicated Instances - private Cloud:
Pro: Security
Cons: Price

• If security is a concern in your organization, 
• if you have to meet compliance standards,  
• hardware, data storage, and network is designed to provide high levels of security that cannot be accessed by other clients in the same data-center. 
• Customization for a dedicated framework - One size does not fit all
• Yes, the price tag is larger. 

References: 
http://blog.fpweb.net/moving-to-the-cloud-choosing-a-multi-tenant-or-dedicated-environment-for-your-business/#.VTVO3SFViko

What is a spot instance in AWS? (32 of 285 technotes for 2015)

1. Spot Instances allow you to name your own price for Amazon EC2 computing capacity. You simply bid on spare Amazon EC2instances and run them whenever your bid exceeds the current Spot Price, which varies in real-time based on supply and demand.

If using spot instances make sure applications in the server 

1. start automatically, after the server restarts
   
2. saves data often so that there is no loss of data
3. handles termination gracefully.

How to extract data from PDF files using Apache Tika? (31 of 285 technotes for 2015)

The Apache Tika™ toolkit detects and extracts metadata and text from over a thousand different file types (such as PPT, XLS, and PDF). All of these file types can be parsed through a single interface, making Tika useful for search engine indexing, content analysis, translation, and much more.

The code below shows a simple example as to how to use Apache Tika.

List of 25+ Natural Language Processing APIs - Mashape Blog

List of 25+ Natural Language Processing APIs - Mashape Blog

Opensource project to convert fixed length flat file or string to Java object? (30 of 285 technotes for 2015)

BeanIO is an open source Java framework for marshalling and unmarshalling Java beans from a flat file, stream, or simple String object.

http://www.beanio.org/

What is Forum Sentry? (29 of 285 technotes of 2015)

Forum Sentry is an XML Appliance

• Industry’s only FIPS 140-2 and  NIAP NDPP certified API Gateway product
  

The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 140-2, (FIPS PUB 140-2), is a U.S. government computer security standard used to accredit cryptographic modules. 

NAIP - National Information Assurance Partnership - 

is a U.S. government initiative that looks at products in the information technology (IT) realm and ensures that they adhere to international standards

NDPP - Network Device Protection profile - 

security requirements for a Network Device (defined to be an infrastructure device (as opposed to an end-user device) that can be connected to a network)

• built-in support for data formats and communication protocols.
• runs the FIPS certified ForumOS
• user interface
• CLI (Command Line Interface) - available via SSH
• Serial Console - 
• Web Admin interface - via HTTPS
• There is no monitor key board or mouse access. 

Network Interfaces

• MGMT - for Management traffic
  
• WAN - for external traffic
• LAN - for bridging to the internal network

What is XML Appliance? (28 of 285 technotes for 2015)

What is it?

• XML Appliance is a special purpose network device - used to secure manage and mediate XML traffic.
  
• Useed in SOA and COC (Cloud Oriented Computing)
  
• Integrate on-premise application to off premise cloud hosted apps..
• synonyms - SOA appliances, SOA gateways, XML gateways, cloud brokers.
  
  
  
• Specialized - MOM (Message Oriented Middleware)
• Originally hardware - but now mostly software and also virtualized - due to advances in computing speed.

Providers:

• Datapower & Vordel - 1999 - Hardware
• Layer 7 - 2002
• Forum Systems - 2001
• Managed Methods - 2005

Industry:

• XML - Cross division and cross company data exchange protocol
  
• XML appliance used in - 
  
  finance, telecommunications, government, energy, logistics and more
• addresses SOA Governance -
  
  how applications delivered as “services” can be shared with or called by other applications
  
  
• 
  
  addressed message security, availability and translation of data so that an application can call another application irrespective of the data format and security policies
  
  
  

Reference - 

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_appliance
  

Managed node fails to synchronize (27 of 285 technotes for 2015)

Access is denied for the getRepositoryEpoch operation on ConfigRepository MBean because of insufficient or empty credentials.

In Administrative console:

1. SSL certificate and key management -> Key set groups ->Select Key set group name -> uncheck the box for “Automatically generate keys”
   
   Clear the Automatically generate keys option.
   
2. From the Key set groups -> check key set Group name and hit Generated Keys tab.
   
3. Click OK and Save to save the changes to the master configuration.
   
4. Stop the dmgr
   
5. On dmgr side delete the contents under wstemp, temp and config/temp folder from <profile_root>
   
6. Start the dmgr
   
7. Stop the Node/Server using stopNode/stopServer commands from the <profile_root>/bin of AppServer
   
8. Manually synchronize the node by running syncNode.sh from <profile_root>/bin, since security is enabled then please run following command
   
   syncNode.sh <DMgr_hostName> <SOAP_PORT_of_DMGR> -username <username> -password <password>
   
9. Start the node and server.
   
10. Logon to Dmgr Administrative console and check the Node/Server availability.

Reference: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21405907

What is Phone Gap? (26 of 285 technotes for 2015)

PhoneGap is a free and open source framework that allows you to create mobile apps using standardized web APIs for the platforms you care about.

http://phonegap.com/